This invention relates to methods and systems for describing the attributes of a product, developing models of the product attributes, and utilizing feedback to modify the design of the product.
Designers of a product, including but not limited to a consumer product such as a perfume, may describe the attributes of the product using a large number and variety of descriptors. That is, using perfume as the example, designers may describe a particular perfume as having various degrees of floral, citrus, fruity, and other characteristics. Existing products (e.g., perfumes) may have known profiles or descriptions. However, it may be difficult for the product designer in designing a new product to predict what combination of attributes (e.g., floralness, citrusness, fruitiness, . . . ) may win high acceptance from consumers or potential customers.
To achieve the objective of mapping acceptability to the consumer or potential customer of different combinations of characteristics in the context of a product, establishing a structured description of the product attribute space may be helpful. That may be true in order to provide product designers with meaningful and actionable feedback as to how a new product could be made more acceptable.
Continuing with the perfume example for concreteness, to be able to tell the perfumer to design a perfume that goes in the direction of perfume A or that is close to perfume C, or that consumer acceptance changes substantially over a small distance, notions of direction and distance should exist. Such notions may not be clearly and unambiguously extractable from the way perfumers describe perfumes, however. Hence, methods and systems that provide a structured quantitative approach may be desirable.